As an avowed atheist living among a sea of believers (both locally and on the Internet), I have spent a lot of time discussing my beliefs (or lack thereof, as the case may be). The purpose of this blog is not to prove the non-existence of God or "de-convert" anybody from their faith, but simply to preserve some of these discussions and allow me to flesh them out through the process of writing them down, as well as to share them with anybody who might be interested in reading them.

Wednesday, September 6, 2017

The Ontological Argument for the Existence of God

I have previously discussed some of the classic arguments offered to “prove” the existence of God, including The Argument from Design, The Cosmological Argument, The Fine Tuned Universe and Pascal’s Wager, so I figured I should briefly touch on the so-called “Ontological”
argument for the sake of completeness. I have avoided talking about this
argument in the past because (a) as originally formulated the argument
seems so laughably inadequate that it really doesn’t bear much
discussion and (b) modern formulations of the argument add so much
jargon and technical word-play that it can be very difficult to even
understand what the argument actually is by the time you finish reading
it. I will admit, however, that the original ontological argument was
seen as significant enough in the past that numerous famous philosophers
such as Kant, Hume and even Saint Thomas Aquinas took the time to
object to it, so perhaps it’s not as laughably inadequate as it appears
to me.

As originally formulated by theologian and philosopher Anselm of Canterbury (1033–1109), the ontological argument is as follows:

It
is a conceptual truth (or, so to speak, true by definition) that God is
a being than which none greater can be imagined (that is, the greatest
possible being that can be imagined).

God exists as an idea in the mind.

A
being that exists as an idea in the mind and in reality is, other
things being equal, greater than a being that exists only as an idea in
the mind.

Thus, if God exists only as an idea in the mind, then
we can imagine something that is greater than God (that is, a greatest
possible being that does exist).

But we cannot imagine something
that is greater than God (for it is a contradiction to suppose that we
can imagine a being greater than the greatest possible being that can be
imagined.)

Therefore, God exists.

He later restated this same argument slightly differently:

By definition, God is a being than which none greater can be imagined.

A being that necessarily exists in reality is greater than a being that does not necessarily exist.

Thus,
by definition, if God exists as an idea in the mind but does not
necessarily exist in reality, then we can imagine something that is
greater than God.

But we cannot imagine something that is greater than God.

Thus, if God exists in the mind as an idea, then God necessarily exists in reality.

God exists in the mind as an idea.

Therefore, God necessarily exists in reality.

As we all know (or should know by now) an argument is only as good as its premises, and a perfectly valid argument can be completely unsound if the premises are not actually true.

The first premise of the ontological argument is that, by definition, God is the greatest possible being that can be imagined. This sinks the entire argument right from the start, since it is defining
God as “the greatest possible thing that can be imagined” without
actually providing any empirical evidence that this is the case. It is
also setting up a wholly circular argument by arbitrarily defining God
as a being that embodies the very characteristic that will later be used
to prove His existence. You might as well define “unicorns” as “the
beings responsible for the color blue” and then claim that the existence
of the color blue is therefore proof that unicorns exist. This is
simply defining God into existence, since we don’t actually know what
God is like even if He were to exist and it basically amounts to an
argument that states, “God, by definition, exists; therefore He exists.”

The
second premise that a being that exists (or “necessarily exists,” if
you prefer) is more perfect than one that doesn’t exist is yet another
assertion without any evidence to support it. How does one even define
“perfect” in the first place? If I want to go all Platonic, should I
start claiming that the “perfect” concept of a chair, to which all
actual chairs are merely compared to in our mind, must somehow actually
exist somewhere or else it can’t actually be “perfect”? Of course not.
“Perfection” is, in many cases, an ideal that does not actually exist
and there is no requirement to think that something must exist in order to be considered perfect. Just asserting that something that exists is “more perfect” than something that is only a concept doesn’t make it so.

Aside
from the fact that this entire argument is nothing more than an attempt
to define God into existence, however, this argument suffers from the
same problem as many of the other arguments I mentioned above. To wit,
at most all these arguments can possibly prove is that some sort
of supreme being exists and not the actual “God” that is actually
worshiped by those who would use these argument to prove their God’s
existence. The God supposedly proved by these arguments is not
the God that answers prayers, performs miracles, provides revelation,
rewards the faithful, punishes sinners, gives us a set of objective
morals, tells us the way to live our lives, etc. It is a nebulous
description of God that could apply equally to the God worshiped by any religion, and therefore cannot be used to prove the existence of the God worshiped by any specific religion. It’s the ultimate bait and switch.